The text of the resolution is now available.
Highlights from Ryan Goodman:
Looks like it covers the bases, from what Goodman says.
Another open thread!
This post is in: NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up
The text of the resolution is now available.
Highlights from Ryan Goodman:
Looks like it covers the bases, from what Goodman says.
Another open thread!
This post is in: NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Violent Insurrection at the Capitol
their strategy is hope he dies, which makes for some really strange bedfellows https://t.co/3IbmhPnzws
— kilgore trout, junky horse (@KT_So_It_Goes) May 19, 2021
CNN, “Republicans fear January 6 probe could undercut 2022 midterm message”:
Senior Republicans are making clear they have little interest in moving forward with a sweeping January 6 investigation in part because a detailed probe could become politically damaging and amount to a distraction for their party just as control of Congress is at stake in next year’s midterm elections.
Publicly and privately, Republicans are making that case, with Senate GOP Whip John Thune noting that there’s concern among some GOP members that the findings of the probe “could be weaponized politically and drug into next year.”…
Thune’s comments came moments after Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell announced his opposition on the floor, contending it would duplicate ongoing probes and contending the deal — which was reached between a House Republican and House Democrat — is designed to find a conclusion that would be in “Democrats’ hands.”
The commission would be structured so 10 members — chosen equally between the leaders from both political parties — could report by year’s end on what happened on January 6, as well as the “influencing factors” behind it. Yet Democrats are already discussing Plan B: To create a select committee in the House to investigate the attack, something that wouldn’t need GOP support to establish.
It’s clear that any such an investigation would also look at then-President Donald Trump’s role in promoting the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, his lies that the election was stolen and his efforts to subvert the will of voters. Moreover, it could put an uncomfortable focus on some conservative GOP senators and House members who sought to overturn the election results in Congress, while keeping the issue front-and-center as the investigation plays out over the next year.
And there are ample questions about whether House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy would be forced to testify to explain what Trump was saying on January 6 given the two spoke during a heated phone call that day…
… [E]ven if the bill fails in the Senate, a select committee in their chamber would give Democrats unilateral subpoena power and be comprised of members of the House. An outside commission, on the other hand, would not be comprised of sitting lawmakers and would require both sides to agree to issue subpoenas.
Democrats have been resistant to go the route of a select committee, knowing that Republicans would attack such a probe as partisan. But Pelosi made clear Wednesday that if Republicans block the commission in the Senate, the issue isn’t going away — and they may take matters in their own hands.
“I certainly could call for hearings in the House with a majority of the members being Democrats with full subpoena power, with the agenda being determined by the Democrats,” Pelosi told reporters. “But that’s not the path we have chosen to go.” Pelosi added: “It’s a question of, if they don’t want to do this, we will.”…
The same miscreants who made BUT HER EMAILS!!! their banner for the last five years and counting are now whining that, well, their actions just a few months ago could be ‘misconstrued’.
And to avoid the risk of a commission pledged to end with 2021, they’re busy dragging out the process, which makes it all the more likely the eventual commission(s) will still be front-page news in 2022.
Because dragging their feet, and character assassination for clickbait, is all they have left in their political arsenal.
Late Night 1/6 Commission Open Thread: Quiet Part Out Loud, AgainPost + Comments (99)
This post is in: NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat
"Be patient with one another. You know, some may say, 'I just feel more comfortable continuing to wear a mask.' They may feel that way … please treat them with kindness and respect." — Biden pic.twitter.com/v7UpJfIPGx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 13, 2021
I’m gonna blame my week of lassitude on the Pfizer shot. It sure didn’t help, in this short term, although yes I know it was all for the best.
Pelosi keeps mask mandate on House floor despite CDC change, sparking GOP backlash: "It’s about control" https://t.co/wzeLonqR2u
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 14, 2021
Maybe she doesn’t want to look at your ugly, unvaccinated Repub faces. Nobody does!
… Asked by CNN whether the House’s mask mandate would be relaxed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said, “No. Are they all vaccinated?”
Her decision, which was outlined in updated guidelines issued Thursday night by Congress’s attending physician, drew swift backlash from Republicans who have long bristled at mask requirements. In a letter sent Thursday, 34 GOP lawmakers urged Pelosi to drop the House’s pandemic restrictions.
“It’s about control,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday evening. “She wants to control the House.”…
[Pro tip: She *does* control the House, Mr. Scalise, because she’s the Speaker and you’re not.]
… Pelosi (D-Calif.) pointed toward a lingering number of unvaccinated House members as part of the decision to mask rules in place on the House floor. Pelosi said last month that roughly a quarter of legislators have yet to receive a coronavirus vaccine and noted: “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated.”
Some Republicans have said they aren’t getting vaccinated because they’ve had covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and now have antibodies. Others, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) have publicly declined to take a vaccine…
“You would hope that science would guide them to protect themselves, their family members and be good colleagues in the workplace to get vaccinated,” Pelosi said last month. “And the sooner that happens, the better for everything.”
anything else is simply obeisance to a massive lie.
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) May 12, 2021
Our Failed Punditocracy:
Yeah sure man the defining crisis of a generation will be completely forgotten in 18 months. https://t.co/X2lJ6EWdFI
— Reinstated Doorknob Licker (@agraybee) May 13, 2021
Voters are going to punish Biden for prosperity and full employment https://t.co/Ul5e2WPXoE
— Alex Hazanov. (@alexhazanov) May 13, 2021
One of the iron laws of punditry is that Republicans are incapable of being big stupid fuckups. Their message is always good, and if we can’t see why, it’s because they understand America in a way we don’t.
— Reinstated Doorknob Licker (@agraybee) May 13, 2021
Friday Morning Open Thread: Thank Murphy It’s *Finally* FridayPost + Comments (138)
This post is in: GOP Death Cult, NANCY SMASH!, Your Place Is In The Resistance, Schadenfreude
https://t.co/yLqbECSk6T pic.twitter.com/iA0cgeRUQ1
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) May 4, 2021
Donald Trump is an old man, not in the best of health, facing considerable legal jeopardy compounded by his failing business enterprises. Some (noisy) portion of the Republican party’s voters have pledged fealty to him, regardless of what Trump’s wavering attentions might mean for other, less prominent GOP members and their districts. Most of the national GOP leadership, elevated by the same Wingnut Wurlitzer tropes that crowned Trump, have publicly announced their loyalty to the Man over the Party (or our mutual commonwealth).
Liz Cheney is still young, by political standards — a full generation younger than TFG, or for that matter Mitch McConnell. She’s already volutarily unpersoned herself in the current Republican Party; the attention-seekers and sycophants who crowd Fox News’ greenrooms will never let her ‘disloyalty’ be forgotten, nor will the hardcore MAGAts forgive her for spotlighting their god-emperor’s nakedness. So she’s nothing to lose, and potentially much to gain, by assuming the mantle of Sensible Republican Anti-Trump Spokeswoman.
Worst that happens is she spends the next couple of decades giving I told you so statements from the security of conservative think tanks & corporate boards. But assuming that the current uneasy Republican balance collapses — that the contradictions between the permanent-party ‘conservatives’ and the manic Trumpistas fails — well, who better to lead the inevitable Not-Democrats party that survives, or arises, in a country where no less and no more than two national parties can thrive?
The GOP is at a turning point. History is watching us, @RepLizCheney writes in an op-ed: https://t.co/f6XTfJnzm7 pic.twitter.com/XmpVz9NrKq
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) May 5, 2021
This is the most perverse take. Donald Trump, the man who, according to practically every elected Republican, still speaks for the party, continues to swear up and down that the 2020 election was stolen. But no, it's CHENEY who's causing problems and rocking the boat. https://t.co/UrXRPMGeFg
— Andrew Egger (@EggerDC) May 4, 2021
Captain Obvious Has Joined the Chat –
If the House GOP ultimately takes stronger action against Liz Cheney than it did against Marjorie Taylor Greene, then one has to wonder if it's time to make tough choices about the continued unity of the party. https://t.co/5g9rd6nMqw
— David French (@DavidAFrench) May 4, 2021
the election results, rather than go along with the rest of the cult-like 'up is actually down' litmus test, then they all turned on her, just like that. It has nothing to do with 'rejecting interventionism' or w/e & everything to do with the GOP becoming a personality cult.
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) May 4, 2021
The irony of far right House Republicans losing their minds over Liz Cheney:
She stole their playbook.
The caucus can’t afford to lose even a small bloc of Representatives.
The terrorists are now the hostages to someone willing to go full reverse-Tea-Party.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) May 3, 2021
Jon Chait, at NYMag:
… The rationale for Cheney’s defenestration is that she has violated decorum. Her forceful denunciation of Trump’s lies “suggested that Cheney was not looking to persuade but to bludgeon. Rhetorical devices like putting THE BIG LIE in all caps gave the tweet a feeling of something one might hear on CNN or MSNBC,” explains Byron York. “The question is, how to address those Republicans and their beliefs.” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin adds, “If she can’t move off this topic as Mitch [McConnell] has, she needs to do that from the back benches.”
The catch, of course, is that Trump and his minions have neither modulated their tone nor moved off the topic. Nor, for that matter, has the rest of the party. The Republican establishment has made a display of affirming the defeated president’s status as its leader. Republicans leaders have made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of their president-in-exile. Aspiring candidates — including not just Trump sycophants like Josh Hawley, but even candidates who have maintained some distance from him, like Nikki Haley — have announced that they will defer to Trump rather than run against him….
The demand that Cheney stop forcefully refuting Trump’s lies about the election is designed to force his enemies into unilateral disarmament. Republican leaders are free to flatter and placate him, but they are not free to call out his lies or return his attacks in kind. Trump’s critics can stay in the party, for now, but they must act like guests in somebody else’s home.
What’s astonishing about Cheney’s dissent is not only that she is such an unlikely figure to mount a doomed and lonely stand. She was born to the party and the conservative movement; she hasn’t got a moderate bone in her body. What’s more unusual still is that she has no obvious rationale other than sheer principle. Elected officials, faced with an unwinnable fight, nearly always yield to realism. Cheney apparently believes that respect for the rule of law is a nonnegotiable principle of conservatism…
Hard to find a lawmaker with a more conservative voting record than Cheney. The GOP is now living in Jonestown. https://t.co/QAprZj5ikm
— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) May 5, 2021
Frankly he’s right. And it’s damning. The message is Trump and the Big Lie, and pretending the insurrection didn’t happen. There’s no other message to deliver. Any policy issues don’t hold a candle to that. https://t.co/0vC7lUy7gt
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 4, 2021
New via CNBC: House Republican Liz Cheney’s top donors are standing by her despite the effort to oust her from the GOP leadership — and some say they will withhold contributions to anyone who opposes Cheney.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) May 5, 2021
REPORTER: Mr. President, do you have any comments on efforts to oust Liz Cheney from the House Reublican leadership post?
BIDEN: I don't understand the Republicans.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 5, 2021
<em>Repubs in Disarray!</em> Open Thread: Liz Cheney Has Calculated Her OptionsPost + Comments (92)
This post is in: Excellent Links, NANCY SMASH!
When asked if the mob had frightened her, she replied, “I’m pretty tough. I’m a street fighter.” Besides, she said with a laugh, lifted a foot clad in her classic 4-inch-high stilettos, “I would have had these” as weapons. pic.twitter.com/OuV6n0jEVr
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 13, 2021
I never did post my review of Molly Ball’s Pelosi when it first came out, but now that it’s available in paperback, I’ll just offer my highest recommendation. Ball is always an interesting writer, and Speaker Pelosi is an excellent subject, of course!
And now there’s a new book, Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power, by Susan Page:
On her 100th day as speaker of the 117th Congress, Nancy Pelosi discussed the dramatic events that opened her tenure, when a mob that stormed the Capitol wanted to kill her.
“That’s what they were setting out to do,” she told USA TODAY, if her security agents hadn’t managed to evacuate her from the House chamber in time. Asked if that frightened her, she replied, “Well, I’m pretty tough. I’m a street fighter. They would have had a battle on their hands.”…
In a wide-ranging interview, Pelosi described a historic start for the new Congress and President Joe Biden, one “on par” in ambition and impact with the first 100 days of FDR and LBJ. She called Biden skilled in Washington politics and bolder in policy than many expected. “Transformative and visionary and experienced,” she said…
She said she would soon introduce legislation to harden the Capitol’s security, indicating she would support the installation of retractable fencing to be deployed only when security threats demanded. She also suggested for the first time that she might move to establish a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection if efforts to create a special 9/11-style commission failed…
When Pelosi talked about the Jan. 6 assault, her voice became lower and more intense.
“I was never personally afraid because I had so much security for myself,” she said. “I was afraid for everybody else, and I’ll never forgive them the trauma that they caused to the staff and the members.” …
Asked about the first 100 days of what is expected to be her last term as speaker, she rattled off priorities the House already has passed, though most are now stalled in the Senate. They include an anti-corruption and ethics bill. A criminal justice bill named for George Floyd; the police officer who killed him is now on trial in Minneapolis. An immigration measure to provide a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” young people brought to this country illegally as children.
“The point is we have more than a vision – a vision with specifics,” she said. “And we’re hoping that the Senate will be able to follow through on some of them, all of them I would hope.”
She said she hasn’t been surprised by the willingness of Biden, who campaigned as a centrist, to pursue a bold agenda once in office. “Understand that nothing really surprises me,” she said, but acknowledged that it was unexpected by some. “I think he is meeting the needs of the American people, and if people want to call that progressive? Hallelujah, that’s a good thing.”
With passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and the approaching debate over a $2.3 trillion stimulus bill, she said, “I feel like I had landed in the promised land of legislation.”
In @PunchbowlNews this AM — A really good excerpt from @SusanPage’s @SpeakerPelosi book.@LeaderMcConnell didn’t want RBG lying in state in the Capitol — Pelosi asked.
And Pelosi sounds off on McConnell. pic.twitter.com/srxpMzmRnX
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 15, 2021
Per The Hill:
… In the book by journalist Susan Page, excerpts of which were obtained by Punch Bowl News, Pelosi expresses her frustration with McConnell and blasts him for his refusal to allow the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda following her death last year.
Ginsburg did lie in state at the Capitol, becoming the first woman to do so, but she was in the Statuary Hall on the House side of the building. McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not attend the service.
“Mitch McConnell is not a force for good in our country,” Pelosi told Page. “He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own.”
The shock and pain @SpeakerPelosi felt when
she realized Trump would win the presidency “was physical; it was actually physical,” she told @SusanPage. “Like a mule kicking you in the back over and over again.” https://t.co/edRsMosqeC— Maureen Groppe (@mgroppe) April 9, 2021
Obama said people underestimate Pelosi’s ability “to grind and grit it out.'”
He called her “as effective as any legislative leader I’ve seen in managing a diverse and often contentious group of folks with a lot of different points of view.”
— Maureen Groppe (@mgroppe) April 9, 2021
Pelosi says the American Jobs Plan is not the opportunity of the generation, but rather the opportunity of a “century”
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 15, 2021
If news that 67% of recipients are spending the #covid relief money that reached their pockets on food, bills, and other necessities is *actually news* to you — you haven’t paid attention to the suffering of the American people this past year. #HelpIsHerehttps://t.co/tccalasmo6
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) April 14, 2021
Proud to Be A Democrat: Nancy Smash, Still FightingPost + Comments (38)
This post is in: NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat
NEWS: Speaker Pelosi has invited President Biden to address a Joint Session of Congress on Wednesday, April 28. https://t.co/RoH4rRH0G1
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) April 14, 2021
Per CBS:
President Biden on Tuesday night accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to address a joint session of Congress on April 28. The address is not an official State of the Union because a president’s first speech before Congress is not considered a State of the Union.
“Nearly 100 days ago, when you took the oath of office, you pledged in a spirit of great hope that ‘Help Is On The Way,'” Pelosi wrote in a letter to Mr. Biden. “Now, because of your historic and transformative leadership, Help Is Here!”…
Republicans will likely soon announce who will give their response…
Former President Trump’s final State of the Union in January 2020 ended in a dramatic fashion when Pelosi ripped up a physical copy of his speech after he finished.
“I tore it up,” she told reporters afterward. “I was trying to find one page of truth on there.” When asked why she had ripped it up, she responded, “It was the courteous thing to do considering the alternative.”
Doing the Work Open Thread: Not *Officially* A State-of-the-Union SpeechPost + Comments (148)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
More and more it appears that Democrats consider the current crisis as having begun in 1981 https://t.co/1MZL8fr29N
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 14, 2021
As families across our country are struggling from the impact of the pandemic, *every Republican in Congress* said “NO” to meeting their needs.
Democrats said “YES” to crushing the virus; “YES” to money in the pockets of people; and “YES” to a return to normalcy on the horizon. pic.twitter.com/3zLmtb36WL
— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) March 12, 2021
One year ago today, our former President said, "I take no responsibility at all."
My how times have (thankfully) changed.
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) March 13, 2021
Somebody has to pay to make this country run. Somebody has to pay for roads and bridges and scientific research. But the top 0.1% pay a lower share of their wealth in taxes than the bottom 99%. We need a #WealthTax to keep the rich from freeloading off America’s middle class.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 13, 2021
Class traitors at the Bloomberg terminals!
Higher Taxes Don’t Scare Millionaires Into Fleeing Their Homes After All – Bloomberg https://t.co/lonsmxWQOY
— Michael Kink (@mkink) March 14, 2021
Sen. Patty Murray, the chair of the Senate's health committee, is reintroducing the Public Health Infrastructure Saves Lives Act — a bill to steer billions to public health departments. She says saying the pandemic has laid bare the need to fund local officials' work.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 12, 2021
With the American Rescue Plan passed and signed, Democrats are now working to make some of its benefits permanent — banking on the belief that certain aspects will be so popular that letting them expire would be a political nightmare.
My latest: https://t.co/NOrpuDUW7l
— Megan Cassella (@mmcassella) March 14, 2021
Monday Morning Open Thread: Fierce Women (Goddess Bless Them)Post + Comments (126)